People's control

The rector of the Higher School of Economics, Yaroslav Kuzminov, at a meeting of the Commission on the Coordination of the Open Government, proposed to federal ministries, services and agencies annually set tasks, publish them and report on execution. Thus, Kuzminov believes, society will be able to control the work of the executive authorities, and the officials themselves, finally, will be able to identify the boundaries of their competence.

Now ministers are reporting only to the prime minister and president, which does not stimulate them to formulate the priorities of their activities that are understandable to the population. Not only citizens for whom the work of federal executive bodies is a mystery, but also officials themselves suffer from this: often they become an object of criticism for mistakes to which they are not involved. So the Ministry of Transport is responsible for pits on the streets, although in fact regional or municipal authorities should be embedded.

Yaroslav Kuzminov. Photo: polit.ru

Yaroslav Kuzminov offers the heads of ministries, services and agencies at the beginning of each year to write a declaration in which they take up 3-5 obligations, and at the end of the year to report on the work done. These simple, meaningful and short documents should be published on the sites of departments, and public councils that are gathered once a quarter can follow the progress of promises.

Now each ministry has a lot of goals and objectives - they are determined based on laws, provisions, state programs, strategies, budget message, presidential decrees and premiere orders, as well as from many instructions and, of course, a political situation. As a result, in case of failure, any minister may be justified by achievements in another area and there will be no formal reasons to reproach it - but one minister cannot solve all the problems of the state.

The declaration of goals will benefit not only the relations of society and the executive branch, since people will understand what indicators can be required from ministers. Also, a new practice will help employees of departments to better fulfill their duties and set the right priorities in work.

Kuzminov proposed to put an experiment on five departments: the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Emergencies. If the experience is successful, the rest of the departments will be instructed to accept similar declarations by July. Dmitry Medvedev, by the way, actually already conducted such an experiment on himself: at the first meeting of his office in May 2012, he outlined seven targets and at the end of the year reported on their performance.

The ministries themselves, in which case, will be guilty of disrupting the programs on colleagues: almost always to solve specific problems, interagency interaction is necessary. The system of declarations and reports is similar to a planned economy, when at the end of the year the director of the plant transferred information about his capabilities to the state plan, and the state plan in response lowered the planned indicators of activity - within the framework of the possibility.

This scheme practically does not stimulate development, unless there is no third -party control over the performance of the enterprise. Not only the authorities, but also the press along with society should become such third -party control. The luck of the initiative of Kuzminov depends on how strictly the prime minister, the president and society will ask officials and control their work on promises. If the conditional Ministry of Labor is allowed to declare the goal “not to allow unemployment of 75 percent”, or if the minister is punished by a reduction in the bonus by ten percent, then, most likely, in a year no one will remember the declarations.

On the other hand, after fulfilling all the promises, the minister will be able to fight off the attacks of opponents, showing the documented effectiveness of his department. So the heads of departments themselves will be interested in setting not quite elementary tasks.

The idea of ​​Yaroslav Kuzminov is far from new and some governments have already organized their work using similar ideas.

In Georgia, after the Rose revolution, President Mikhail Saakashvili set himself the task of overcome corruption in the country and create an effective state apparatus. The Minister of Economics, a former Russian billionaire Kakha Bendukidze, decided to oblige all ministries to determine priorities for himself.

Kakha Bendukidze. Photo: reforms.ge

Bendukidze himself later said that only the Ministry of Defense was able to competently write a document in which the department’s mission was clearly formulated - the military doctrine helped, in which such things were already registered. After the first failure, Bendukidze invited all ministers to describe the three largest reforms that they are going to carry out. More departments coped with this task, but some still tried to reflect in the document the whole range of their claims to the world around him. For example, the program for economic development and reduction in poverty contained six hundred priorities, and the Ministry of Agriculture believed that Georgian goods did not have a market and at the same time planned to increase production.

David Chantladze, who from 2005 to 2008 was the deputy minister, and then the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, said that the heads of all departments were offered to describe their activities on one page. After that, it turned out that some departments do not do anything de facto at all.

As a result, after the development of clear priorities, for each department of Georgia, it was possible to accept a balanced budget for the first time in many years, where it was clear what every Lari was going on.

His former governor Oleg Chirkunov tried to make the work of officials of the Perm Territory meaningful and purposeful. So Dmitry Medvedev will not have to study the experience of Georgia, with which he fought in 2008, and it will be enough to read the blog of the former governor.

Oleg Chirkunov. Photo: islamnews.ru

Oleg Chirkunov created a site on which he posted a single target codifier . It indicated all kinds of goals that were set before the administration of the region, as well as responsible for their implementation. For example, Deputy Prime Minister Catherine Berber was responsible for the development of human potential, and another Deputy Prime Minister, Alexander Kudryavtsev, for the beginning of the construction of the Belomur railway (White Sea-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi-Komi).

Oleg Chirkunov himself on his blog tried to write weekly about plans for the coming seven days, as well as what he did and how it helped to realize some of the goals standing in front of the edge. He also urged his ministers to lead his personal blogs in about the same spirit.

However, officials did not take root in the goals of their work. After the resignation of Chirkunov at the end of April 2012, the tradition of declaring the goals of the regional government somehow left by itself, and the ministers ceased to write weekly about their work. Although the new governor supports his blog in working condition, there are constantly posts about his work or posts with a proposal to discuss this or that problem to readers.

The bureaucrat, as you know, is a very tenacious creature. They say that if in an open field to put a table and put a bureaucrat for it, then after three years he will be able to present a multi -volume report on why his presence in the clean field is vital for the nation and why an apparatus of 500 people grew around him.

Once again, to remind the official that he has some goals in addition to sitting down the official chair is very useful and instructive. Especially if the control is not consisted of other officials, but of really interested people - businessmen, citizens, and at least politicians.